Due to the connected aircraft phenomenon, the way avionics and electronic flight bag (EFB) applications work are rapidly and drastically changing. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and avionics manufacturers are moving a lot of non-critical features/applications from the avionics bay to the EFB in the form of uncertified applications (e.g., non-critical controller pilot data link communications (CPDLC) messages reception, 4-D trajectory/takeoff and performance calculations, vertical situational displays applications in some legacy aircrafts, etc.). These intelligent and interconnected EFB applications are inexpensive and help bring sophisticated features into the cockpit in a matter of months, compared to the long cycle time of expensive certified software. Such EFB applications target various domains of operations, such as aircraft maintenance, optimized flight planning/upload/rerouting, approach preview applications, fuel analytics applications, pilot aid solutions in improving the flight's safety and performance margins (e.g., fuel imbalance monitors, standard operating procedure (SOP) monitors, weather monitoring applications, notice to airmen (NOTAM) and other situational awareness related applications, etc.).
The number of uncertified applications being developed is rapidly growing and in the near future, both certified and uncertified applications will work seamlessly together. Due to several benefits that the uncertified applications offer (like inexpensive development cost, quick to develop and deploy, more sophisticated features, greater resources like MIPS/memory/processing speed etc.,) and also due to increasing robust connectivity between certified applications and uncertified applications, a lot of non-safety critical functionalities are increasingly developed as uncertified applications rather than getting developed as certified applications.
Uncertified applications can generate a variety of alert messages. Some of these alert messages can be crucial to safety, such as weather or NOTAM messages, or airline operations center (AOC) uplinks of flight plans, some alert messages are important for maintenance/performance operations or passenger comfort (e.g., SOP monitor based alerts), and some alert messages are for lesser important communications (e.g., airliner CPDLC messages on operations). While some of the messages can wait, other messages deserve immediate attention depending on the flight phase and pilot workload.
During flight, the pilot has many tasks to perform and a good number of controls and displays to keep in view. This includes the windshield (to look out for clouds, traffic, terrain, airport, etc.), the primary flight display (PFD) (to monitor critical flight parameters), the multi-function display (MFD) (showing a moving map, navigation information, weather data, route plan, sensor/device status), and aural/visual/physical alerts from various systems. The EFB device is generally placed in a location of the cockpit that does not get pilot attention readily, and hence, alerts can be easily missed by a pilot who is watching the cockpit displays or the windshield. Also, some of these alerts may be hidden behind other windows of different applications. Further, alerts cannot be ported to the cockpit displays, since the alerts are non-standard messages and include many varieties, and thus cannot be allowed to clutter the view of the pilot. Moreover, even though some of these alerts might be important, they cannot distract the pilot in some crucial junctures like emergencies/takeoffs/landings.
Accordingly, there is a need to have an intelligent method of informing a pilot about the alerts from uncertified applications based on the context of flight and the pilot workload, but without distracting the pilot from handling safety critical activities.